PF Razorpay Reaches Unicorn Status; Visa Partners with Stripe for B2B: News Roundup

PaymentFacilitator’s News Roundup is a curated mix of the past week’s news and articles from around the web, including company announcements, global payments news, and other coverage and analysis of topics relevant to payment facilitators.

Fintech Funding

Payment facilitator Razorpay is India’s latest unicorn after raising $100 million in a Series D round. The round was led by Singapore firm GIC and Sequoia India. The six-year-old company says it will likely process about $25 billion in transactions this year, five times the total it processed last year. From TechCrunch.

B2B Connection

Visa and Stripe have partnered to enable B2B payments using Stripe Connect. Buyers using the Visa Payables Automation platform will be able to pay suppliers with a virtual Visa card. Buyers who aren’t yet able to accept payments will be prompted to register with Stripe Connect. The service is currently available in 30 markets globally. From Finextra.

Digital India

Over the last few years, digital payments in India have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 55.1%. This is according to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of India. Payment volume grew from 5.93 billion transactions in March 2016 to 34.35 billion transactions in March of this year. The value of digital payment transactions grew at a CAGR of 15.2%. From Business Standard.

According to Bhaskar Chatterjee, head of product for PF Ezetap, India has a long way to go to become cashless, but “the journey has begun.” Chatterjee made the comments in an interview. Government regulation has reduced consumers’ incentive to use cash, he said, and they are getting used to the convenience of digital payments. While internet connectivity is lacking in some areas, the ability to conduct transactions offline is helping consumers continue using digital payment methods until the country becomes better connected. From The Plunge Daily.